How Meat Contributes to Global Warming: Scientific American

How Meat Contributes to Global Warming: Scientific American:

The FAO report found that current production levels of meat contribute between 14 and 22 percent of the 36 billion tons of "CO2-equivalent" greenhouse gases the world produces every year. It turns out that producing half a pound of hamburger for someone's lunch a patty of meat the size of two decks of cards releases as much greenhouse gas into the atmosphere as driving a 3,000-pound car nearly 10 miles.

Americans eat on average three ounces of beef a day.

Guest Column: A Low-Tech Treatment for Bee Plague

I wonder if the bees would consider some of those half-built, abandoned McMansions outside of DeLand as sites for their hives?

Guest Column: A Low-Tech Treatment for Bee Plague - Olivia Judson Blog - NYTimes.com: "As the swift expansion of feral honeybees across the Americas shows, they are not especially picky about their habitat; most anything outside of parking lot or vast monoculture will do. And for native bees, habitat could be restored to suit the needs of whichever species are exceptionally good pollinators of local crops. Bumblebees, for instance, are the best pollinators of Maine blueberries, whereas blue orchard bees work well for California almonds.

The right geographic arrangement of habitat would also depend on which native species are desired for a certain crop. Many native species are willing to fly relatively far from their home habitat — a kilometer or so — to visit flowers; accordingly, patches of habitat for these bees could be placed relatively far apart.

January is the brownest of months...

The destruction wrought by recent frost...

Quickly...

Ah... The carnage. My yard is brown. So much is dead.

So, today I started spring seeds...

ABC--Cucuzzi Squash
DEF--Tatume Squash
GHI--Jetsetter Tomato
JKL--Cucino Cuke
MND--Sweet Spot Pepper X3R

And, in a smaller flat
A--Little Fingers Eggplants
B--Sungold Tomato
C--I have no idea. Forgot to write it down. Darn.

Broccoli

Fiesta. That's the kind I planted. Fiesta broccoli.

Two new brassicas...

My gardening guru and pal Christine gave me a couple new brassicas to try, Beira Tronchuda Cabbage and Redbor Kale. I transplanted some of them out into the garden this morning, along with another planting of radishes (Cherry Bell), peas (Cascadia this time, amongst some Super Sugarsnaps) and Upland Cress. (All these seeds from Pinetree.) I also picked another three large and beautiful tomatoes (Jetsetter). We had a tomato salad last night (along with some shark I caught on Tuesday, deep fried with hushpuppies... mmmmmm....). The tomatoes' texture is excellent, but a little less intensely flavored than summer tomatoes.

Garden in January...

From Collages

A slide show of what's going on in my garden...

Cool season seeds for flowers...

I started yesterday, in my Parks seed starter...
1 Calendula
2 (ABC) Ivy geranium (wonderful!)
2 (DEF) Ringo Scarlet Geranium (both geraniums from Swallowtail)
3,4 Gaura 'The Bride'
5, 6, 7 Candytuft 'Dwarf Fairyland'

And a big flat of snapdragons...

These are all plants that have proven reliable for the spring/early summer. I direct sowed nasturtiums.

Chard and turnips... &c.

The chard and turnips that I sowed back in October are ready for harvest, so about sixty days from seed to harvest. That's considerably longer than the times listed, but of course those are days-to-harvest numbers for spring sowing. I pulled up some of the turnips two nights ago--the size of golf balls and sweet enough to eat like radishes. I browned them in butter, then tossed in their still-tender leafy greens and cooked them for a few more minutes. A dash of vinegar and plenty of salt, and that was supper.

Squirrels have played havoc with my radishes and carrots... I don't know how the know, or why they do it, but every time I sow those two seeds, the darn beasts spend the night digging in those rows. This has happened at least half a dozen times this fall, and as a result, I have hardly any carrots or radishes growing and I had to order more seeds...

On the plus side of the ledger, my lettuces are finally doing well, Jericho in particular. The warm weather has quickened the tomatoes and I harvested the first Jetsetter a few days ago. Very tasty and much better quality than I'm used to for winter tomatoes.

Latest seed order...

From Pinetree. Cheap seeds, good selection. These have all worked well for me.

Pinetree Garden Seeds
PO Box 300
New Gloucester, ME 04260

Product #: SP17-MUNCHING MIX 4 OZ
Product #: 431-TOKYO CROSS TURNIP (F1 hybrid 30 days)
Product #: 303-FRENCH BREAKFAST RADISH (25 days)
Product #: 7201-SUGAR SNAX CARROT (F1 hybrid 63 days)
Product #: 189-CRESS-UPLAND (25 days)
Product #: 19102-DINOSAUR KALE (53 days)

March in December...

Not feeling much like Christmas out there... but compared to what other parts of the country are suffering now, I'll take the warmth and sun. Funny that I was just complaining about the cold.

A quick update in pictures...

Some Apollo Arugula, window boxes with salad greens, blackberries, Dinosaur kale, Jetsettter tomatoes, and cassava canes for next year.

Florida in December

Yellow Oncidium orchid...

Cassava cuttings

Jetsetter in December...

It's been an exceptionally cold winter: No frosts yet, but still, very cold. It seems every week we get into the mid- or upper-thirties. My tomatoes, though, have been setting lots of fruit, which is slowly ripening. If we get through the winter with no frosts (doubtful), or I nurse these plants through them, I'll have a great harvest this spring.

Cassava harvest...

Harvest from my first try with cassava. I got some cuttings from a gardening friend (thanks, Felix!) back in, what, May? Made numerous cuttings from the original piece and shared with friends, then planted what was left in the garden: three small pieces.

From grazing in your garden

(You can see the cassava cutting in the lower left corner, beginning of June.)
If I'd gotten it planted in the garden earlier, I would have had a better harvest. Still, considering the space I gave it and the total lack of water, fertilizer, etc. -- not bad. Certainly no worse than sweet potatoes. And now I have fifteen linear feet of cassava stem to make cutting from.

Fall tomatoes...

Delta Charlie knows what he's talking about, and he recommended two cherry tomatoes for fall planting:

Hi all, the first of the fall tomatoes just started to ripen. The winner of the race for the earliest tomato looks to be the Sweet Quartz cherry and just behind it was the Golden Gem. Had some for lunch on Sunday and they sure were good!

My Jet Setter tomatoes are coming along nicely, but still green. Tonight's near-freezing temperatures may do them in... so be it.

Growing lettuce in FLA

From a post over on the Florida Forum of GardenWeb... my thoughts on salad greens in FLA:

i direct-sowed a bunch of lettuce in september but nothing came up (but the brassicas all came up--broc, collards, rocket). christine (happly_fl_gardener) probably correctly diagnosed the problem as soil fungus, and the small seeds couldn't germinate. (maybe dusting them with fungicide or soaking them in a bit of weak need might have helped.) in the past, i've always direct-sowed my lettuce, but typically i don't plant it until mid-november or later.

at the beginning of october i sowed a bunch of red sails lettuce (from tony--thanks!) in a large windowbox in a mostly-soiless mix, and they all germinated. i've also got a bunch of jericho lettuce going in windowboxes...

anyway, long story short, i learned some things: soil's just to microbiologically active when temps are above, say, 80 here in florida. little seeds (like carrots, parsley, lettuce) don't germinate because they rot or are rendered otherwise sterile. if you want to start lettuce early, i think a soil-less or nearly so mix is necessary. if you want to direct sow, then wait until things cool down--evening temps below 60.

Preserving...

I grew up in a household that canned: Every fall, my mom dragged out the pressure cooker and canning kettle, and went to work on the tomatoes, corn, and peppers from my father's large kitchen garden. (He was an excellent gardener, but never saw fit to include children in his past time.) Reading this article brought to mind those steamy August and September afternoons helping my mom in the kitchen, but it also dug up memories of my grandmother's root cellar, located in the basement of the wash house on her turn-of-the-century farmhouse where she lived the better part of five decades. When she died, the shelves were still full of large, half-gallon jars with produce from her small plot out the back door. The smell down there was always odd but not unpleasant: the mineral scent of the limestone that provided the foundation and floor, the sourish smell of pickles and sauerkraut, the scent of fabric softener and bluing from upstairs.

No real need for a root cellar here in Florida, except for making beer. Actually, I think if we had one we'd use it more in the doldrums (August and September) than the winter, when there's plenty groing fresh in the garden.

Food Storage as Grandma Knew It
The Worleys, like a number of other Americans, have made the seemingly anachronistic choice to turn their basement into a root cellar. While Ms. Worley’s brownstone basement stash won’t feed the couple through the winter, she said, “Ithink it’s a healthy way to go and an economical way.”

According to a September survey on consumer anxieties over higher fuel and food prices from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University in Ames, 34 percent of respondents said that they were likely to raise more of their own vegetables. Another 37 percent said they were likely to can or freeze more of their food. The cousin to canning and freezing is the root cellar.

Bustling about the garden...

Let's see... What to say about my gardens. First, my flower gardens are in disarray. My Prosperity rose suddenly up and died. This rose was about five years, and has (had!) a trunk the size of a wine bottle. I noticed a problem at the beginning of September, and within a few weeks, it was dead. I have no idea what's wrong with it, but in the same bed I have other roses on Fortuniana that are also looking much worse than they did a few months ago. I have no clue what's going on--no evidence of insect damage, and I tested the pH--just a bit under seven, so ideal for roses. It's heavily mulched, rich soil. I can only guess that the stress of a very dry spring followed by Fay's twenty-two inches weakened the plant and left it susceptible to disease. Whatever. It's dead now, and I am going to radically rethink that bed. Primarily, I've decided to move away from roses as structure and towards other shrubs that require less maintenance. Nothing is more beautiful than a rose in its prime, but the fact is that roses are temperate (and temperamental) plants, and we live in tough climes here in FLA. That bed is essentially a blank template, and I'm going to rework it to have a lot more blooms, a lot denser foliage, and lower water and chemical needs.

Sigh. Very depressing about my Prosperity. It was a favorite of mine.

The veg garden is flourishing with the moderate temperatures and cool nights. We had a doozy of a rainstorm a couple of weeks ago, and no rain since. That's been ideal, since it's let me water modestly every day and kept the seeds I sowed from being washed away by the torrents of rain we get here. No fungal problems, surprisingly little insect damage aside from the inevitable snail damage on the lower leaves of seedlings. But they're growing fast enough to outgrow what problems there are.

A note to myself: August first is not too early to start Brassicaceae. I started them on August 15, and had great germination and fine growth, so a couple weeks earlier shouldn't make much difference. On the other hand, the lettuce and carrot seeds I sowed still haven't germinated after six weeks, so I'll likely have to resow them. Perhaps with the cool nights we've been having, the seeds will still germinate. I simply don't know how long small seeds like that persist in soil before decaying or getting eaten. We'll see. Fortunately, the salad seeds are all saved from last year, so, nothing ventured, nothing gained will be my attitude.

Best things in the garden right now: Kales, collards, broccoli, and arugula. Herbs are starting to come back from their summer simpering.

Spent half an hour this morning doing a heavy fall pruning on my Old Garden Roses. Oh, I also tested the pH around my blueberries. Despite lots of pine bark mulch, careful preparation of the bed, etc., the pH has risen from around five to seven--far too sweet for the blueberries to thrive. So, I threw a lot of garden sulfur around them and watered it in thoroughly. I expect that by early spring the pH will have lowered substantially and they'll put on some decent growth.